Area Directors notes, July 25, 2013

Joe Antonioli joined the meeting to give an update on SANSSpace/Online Language Lab. SANSSpace is a pilot project being currently being used and evaluated by Language School faculty and students. Joe has been working with Amy Foote on drafting survey questions to help evaluate SANSSpace in order to determine if we want to move the service into production. If we do, we will need to determine who will be impacted by support requests, and what the expectations are for support from the Helpdesk. The program could ultimately be adopted by the undergraduate language programs, MIIS, and Schools Abroad. Once Joe and the CurrTech Team understands the Language Schools’ perspective, they will make a recommendation to the directors.

The ADs then had a brief discussion about the LIS organizational structure and space needs. Sponsorship of the Space Team will shift to Rebekah Irwin.

In a never-ending quest for determining the perfect balance of frequency and length, the directors reviewed the directors’ meeting structure. We agreed to shorten the meeting length to 1½ hours unless the agenda requires more time. We would like to set agendas for Thursday meetings by Monday at noon. Urgent issues that cannot wait until the following week can be added late if necessary.

We briefly discussed preparation of the LIS Annual Report. Mike will prepare a 1 page summary, linked to the quarterly reports. We also talked some about the need for a repository of commonly needed statistics.

We began a general discussion about a long-term strategy for storage options, including making more systematic use of cloud options:

we need to establish a plan to systematically evaluate emerging options for our key technology platforms and services;

we should be considering how the College community already uses public tools, and take that into consideration in our thinking;

discussed “best-of-breed” IT service strategies vs. a strategy that emphasizes or prefers cloud hosting vs. locally hosting, etc., in general;

we need to be concerned about security and reputation;

it should be secure, sustainable, affordable, simple, convenient and user-friendly;

conversation rapidly expands into other areas such as BYOD (“bring your own device”)

to be continued…

We will invite the CurrTech Team to meet with us to review goals, projects, and priorities, including the idea of looking at possible streaming video solutions. There are implications beyond curricular technology with this, but it seems like a good place to start.